by Bil Wright
Miss Murphy didn’t get fired. But I could tell how mad she was from the way she treated me in class for the next two days. Then we all met in Mr. Kilgallen’s office again and Miss Murphy apologized to both me and Mom with this face that looked like she had a rubber mask on.
Mr. Kilgallen asked Mom if she wanted me taken out of Miss Murphy’s class. “You know that means he’d be put in a lower group, don’t you?” which meant I wouldn’t be in the smart group anymore. Mom didn’t even look at me before she answered. “Why would I punish my son because you hired a Nazi to teach him?” She stared at Miss Murphy and told him, “If she makes any more comparisons to pygmies, I’m going to my congressman. And as of this minute, I want her to begin calling my son by the name I gave him.” Mr. Kilgallen sort of laughed and hiccupped at the same time. Miss Murphy said she was sorry again if Mom was offended and asked if she could be excused.
“Mrs. Stamps,” Mr. Kilgallen said to Mom, “you certainly do get yourself worked up.”
When I got home, Mom and I went over the story about sixty times, taking turns playing Mr. Kilgallen and Miss Murphy. Lorelle laughed along as if she understood perfectly what the performance was about. Mostly Mom kept telling me to play her, but every time I did she’d say, “Oh, I never said that. That’s not real. You’re making it up.” And it probably did sound made up by then, even to her. Often, when I described something Mom said or did, it seemed made up. But if you’d been a part of it, if you were anywhere around it, you knew how real it was.
6
When I first saw Jackie Wilson on Saturday Hit Parade, I was in seventh grade. Mom heard him singing from the kitchen and asked me, “Who’s singing like that, Louis?”
“A new guy named Jackie Wilson,” I called back. “He’s black.” Before he’d come on, I’d been dancing around with Lorelle in my arms, but I put her down now, unable to do anything but stare at the television screen. Jackie Wilson was the prettiest black man I’d ever seen, with high, jutting cheekbones and skin that looked like powdered satin. He was also one of the few black men I’d seen on Hit Parade. There were groups sometimes where nobody particularly stood out, but not that many solo acts. No one like this.
“Nothing new about Jackie Wilson. He’s just new to you. This must be his comeback,” she said. “Some woman shot him up good a few years ago. He almost died. I’m surprised he can talk, much less sing.”
Somebody shot him?! Now I had to get down on my knees, closer to the screen. I turned the volume up. Jackie Wilson sang higher than any man I’d ever heard and wore a suit with pants so tight you could see his calf muscles. He’d take off his tie, then his jacket, singing the whole time, and you could see how much he was sweating. Shirt soaked through, his chest and stomach smooth and dark under his white dress shirt. He jerked his head from side to side until his long processed hair fell over his forehead. He looked dangerous.
The song was a warning to somebody they better stop messing around, Jackie’s heart was breaking and he didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to take the pain. He was holding the microphone as if this was the person he was singing to, with his big, ringed fingers wrapped around their face and neck. He wanted to kiss them, but they’d hurt him so much, he might have to hurt them back. “You’d bettah stop, baby, messin’, messin’ round,” he moaned, his voice swooping from a trembling soprano to a hoarse, rusty shout. He fell to his knees cradling the microphone one moment, looking like he was strangling it the next.
Love. And danger. On his knees, sweating and screaming with his hair hanging. “You bet-tah stop, baby, messin’, messin’ round.” I wanted him to scream about me like that.
• • •
When Hit Parade was over, Mom started upstairs. “Bring Lorelle, Louis,” she instructed. When I looked into their bedroom, she was leaning into her mirror, trying to even out the black hills she’d drawn for eyebrows. “Come in here. I want to talk to you about Christmas.”
I went in and sat on the side of the bed where Ben slept. Leaning over onto his pillow, I imagined his face under my elbow.
“Do you realize you have to be the only thirteen-year-old in the world who can’t ride a damn bicycle?”
This wasn’t the first time she’d asked me if I realized everyone around me could ride a bike. What I wanted to know was, why did it matter so much to her?
“There isn’t a child out there who can’t ride a bike unless they’re blind or crippled. Every year I ask you if you want one and you say no. This year I made up my mind I’m going to get you one and you’ll learn to ride it.”
Other kids in the projects had bikes, but no one had one that was new. Sure, the older guys rode new bikes, but they were stolen and everybody knew because they bragged about it to anybody who’d listen. A new bike would probably get me killed.
• • •
Christmas morning, I knew I was looking at trouble. The first thing I thought when I saw it was that it looked like a brand-new red lipstick with tires. If there was anywhere in the world I could’ve gotten away with a bike like this, it wasn’t the Stratfield Projects.
Right after dinner she told me, “You can take the bike out now. Remember, they say the only way to learn how to ride is to stay on it.”
“What about the ice? I shouldn’t take it out on the ice, should I?”
“There’s not that much ice out there. I’ll bet if any other kid in the projects got one, they’d be out there, ice or no ice. Learn now. It’ll be spring before you know it.”
I walked the bike around and around the courtyard, trying to get up the courage to jump the pedal closest to me with one foot and throw my other leg over the bar to the other side. If I could just get on it, pushing the pedals to keep it going couldn’t be that hard. When I did push off on my side, I couldn’t get my leg up and over to the other side fast enough before the bike fell over onto the ice. I jumped up, looking down to the other end for Mom, just in case. I tried a few more times. Each time, the bike crashed to the ground. Finally, I looked up and there she was, coming toward me in her coat and bedroom slippers.
“What’s going on out here? Can you ride it yet?”
“No, ma’am. Not yet,” I told her.
“Well, I want to see you ride it today. I asked Ben to come out here to help you.”
“No. Please. I don’t need him.” A lesson from Ben was the last thing I wanted. I could feel eyes on me from all over the projects. It was only a matter of time before I’d be surrounded.
“What’s the matter with you? Maybe if you gave him a chance every once in a while, the two of you could be friends.”
I felt trapped in a world like those glass snow scenes with the miniature houses and all the water sloshing from side to side. I would have given anything to be able to disappear through a crack in the ice, leaving the bike to whoever wanted it.
Mom went inside and in moments Ben came out in a jacket, galoshes, and one of those hats with the bib and flaps. It wasn’t that cold, but I guessed he thought he’d be out there for a while.
“Your mother seems to think you need help out here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, this is usually something kids teach themselves. If it was something you wanted to do, I’m sure you’d find a way to learn it. You being as smart as you are.” He held the back of the seat and nodded for me to start.
I ran, pushed down hard on the pedal closest to me with my outside leg, and threw my leg up and over to the other side. Ben continued to hold on to the seat, running behind me. I pumped as hard and as fast as I could, especially after he let go. For a moment I thought there’d been a miracle. I seemed to be suspended, held up by invisible strings as the bike sped forward. When I got to the corner, I panicked. I turned the handlebars sharply, feeling the bike quiver beneath me. I’d lost control. I crashed, noisily.
In these few minutes, as I expected, several boys had gathered in the courtyard. At first, they stood in the distance snickering. Ben said nothing as we repeated the seq
uence. Pedal, pedal, fall. Pedal, pedal, crash. Each time, the snickers got louder. Each time, I glanced at Ben, hoping he’d decide on some way to end the whole thing.
Finally, as I scrambled to get up from what I’d decided was the absolutely last fall I’d let any one of them witness, they surrounded Ben and me yelling, “Why don’t ya let me ride? C’mon, let me ride it!”
Ben started to grin at them. “Hold on,” he said. “Hold on, guys.” I stared at him, waiting to see how he was going to get rid of them.
He stood in front of them, like he was going to try to reason with them. “Who here knows how to ride?” he asked.
They all began yelling, “I do!” “I been knowin’ how to ride!” “Please, please let me ride it, please!”
If this was a plan to distract them, I thought, Ben was wrong. They’d never give up now.
“Come on,” he invited the closest, whose name I didn’t even know. “Just a short one, though.”
I stood watching as they took turns, fighting over who would go next.
No one spoke to me, not Ben, not any of them. I was shaking with anger, but I couldn’t look at him. Mom had to be watching. She had to know what she’d started.
When the last boy had taken his ride around the courtyard, Ben turned to me and asked, “Well, did you learn something by watching at least?”
“Yes, sir,” I said evenly, looking past him toward the apartment.
“You want to try again?”
“No, sir.” I took the handlebars and slowly walked the bike home. I knew Ben was following me. I could hear the boys calling out to him to let them have another chance.
Mom opened the door for me. I left the bike on the stoop, went in and started upstairs. Silently, Mom held the door for Ben. She closed it behind him. “Damn you, Ben,” she said, “Damn you.”
The next morning I took the bike outside and down to the other end of the projects where it would be harder for Mom to see me from the window, or even the stoop. The day before had been humiliating, but it had shown me something after all. I’d watched boys of all different sizes and shapes ride my bike, some of whom I knew were as old as I was and couldn’t read or count. I understood the secret had to be in practice, not in intelligence. Now, I was determined.
When I got tired of falling, I decided to hide out behind the bushes awhile to rest. Even though there weren’t any leaves on them, they were too dense for anyone to see me. When I pushed the bike through to the other side, Ray Anthony Robinson was standing behind the bushes, peeing and smoking a cigarette.
Ray Anthony lived across the courtyard with his mother in the 4B apartment building next to where we’d lived in 4A before we moved to the bungalows. Nobody was really sure how old Ray Anthony was, but Miss Helen, Mom’s hairdresser, said she thought he had to be seventeen at least. He didn’t go to high school and by law, you had to go until you were sixteen. Miss Helen said nobody she knew could remember a time when Ray Anthony had ever gone to school, but she was sure he must have. She whispered to my mother that Ray Anthony was “an out-and-out hoodlum.” Miss Helen was always calling somebody’s child a hoodlum, but I could tell from the way she said it that to be an “out-and-out hoodlum” was more serious than an ordinary run-of-the-mill hoodlum. So I stared at Ray Anthony after that from my window wondering what kind of crimes he might be on his way to commit.
When I pushed through the bushes to Ray Anthony Robinson standing there peeing and smoking, it felt like I’d pushed through to the other side of the world. He turned in my direction and aimed right through the spokes of my front tire. My eyes followed the arc back to where it came from, Ray Anthony Robinson’s dick. It was long, wide and the color of these cookies Miss Odessa used to give me for dessert when I spent the night. Almond Macaroons. Most likely, Ray Anthony was the color of Almond Macaroons all over, but I’d never thought about it until I saw his dick. The way he looked at me, with his cigarette hanging from his lips and his waist pushed forward at me, you’d have thought it was the most natural thing in the world for us to be there, him peeing and me watching.
When he stopped peeing, he didn’t put his dick back in his pants. He spat the cigarette in my direction, but he wasn’t trying to hit me with it. He started peeing again, aiming at his cigarette until the smoke stopped spiraling up from it. I tried not to look impressed.
“Who gave you the girl’s bike for Christmas?”
“It’s not a girl’s.” It was hard to sound as forceful as I wanted, watching him slowly tuck himself back into his pants.
“You gonna let me ride it?”
He’d zipped his pants and I could look him in the face. I’d never been this close to Ray Anthony before, and he’d certainly never said anything to me. It was the first time I realized one of his two front teeth was chipped, just a little on the inside corner. He also had a big dent in his chin.
“No,” I said. If I’d thought about it, I might have been scared to say no to him. But it seemed like he didn’t expect me to say yes, he’d already figured out I’d say no, that wasn’t the point of him asking. He walked closer to me and reached for the handlebars. That’s when I saw his hair had a rusty, orange glow to it. I didn’t like orange or red much. But Ray Anthony Robinson’s hair was unlike any other reds or oranges I’d seen before.
“Leggo,” he told me.
I smelled the cigarette on his breath, kept staring at the chipped tooth. I was filling in the space to see what he’d look like if he got it fixed.
“I can’t let you ride it. My mom will see.”
“I’ll go the other way. Leggo.”
I’d already let go. Ray Anthony pushed my bike through the bushes. I stood in the opening and watched him throw his leg over it easily without having to get a running start. He was wearing shoes with pointy toes and buckles on the sides. Pushing off, he huddled over the bars like the kids did when they raced each other. Except Ray Anthony wasn’t racing anybody. He was just riding my bike wherever he’d decided to take it. I watched his butt lifted in the air and the muscles in his legs as he pumped the pedals. All I could do was wait behind the bushes and hope he wouldn’t ride it in front of my house where Mom could see him, and that he’d bring it back. Soon.
I started to feel the cold for the first time that morning. But I couldn’t move, playing the whole thing with Ray Anthony backwards and forwards in my mind. His cigarette was lying a few feet away. That and his footprints in the snow with the long, pointy toes were my evidence that he’d really been there.
But evidence wouldn’t matter anyway. He hadn’t beat me up, knocked me down and ridden over me on my own bike. I was sure he’d seen me coming, sure that he’d waited till I could watch him, smoking and making bridges of piss in the air. But hoodlum or not, he’d told me only twice, without sounding any more dangerous than my own mother, to let go of those handlebars. And I had. Without a fight, without even thinking about fighting him.
It might have been a half hour, it might have been longer before Ray Anthony brought my bike back, but by now, the time didn’t matter. Whatever happened had happened already, before he left. It’s the difference between when something begins and something continues. You can’t compare the two.
When he pushed the bike back through the bushes, there was sweat running down from his thick bush of rust-colored hair and he had a perfectly folded handkerchief he kept patting his forehead with.
“You want me to ride you now? C’mon. Get behind me.”
He was crazy. If I could get the bike away from him, the only thing I wanted to do was run home with it and tell my mother any lie I could think of to keep from coming outside again. The bike had attracted people I never would have spoken to or had anything to do with. If I couldn’t lose it or give it away, I had to think of some excuse not to bring it out again anytime soon.
By the time I got home, Miss Odessa had already called Mom and told her she’d seen me behind the bushes with Ray Anthony Robinson. Told her she saw Ray Anthony ride away from the b
ushes on a red bicycle which by now the whole projects knew was mine. Mom asked me, “Well, what’s your story, Louis?” but she was already in a mood to beat some behind.
“You gonna let everybody in the projects ride it but you? I didn’t spend months cleaning behind white men for that.”
“He made me.” I was looking at her, but I was picturing Ray Anthony Robinson with his chipped tooth, his rusty hair.
Mom started with her fists. “No, today was your fault. You can’t blame today on anybody else.” Then she grabbed the broom. She turned it upside down and used the stick part on me as my sister watched, looking troubled, but helpless.
• • •
The following Saturday morning Mom excused me from cleaning the apartment. “Take the bike outside and see how long you can hold on to it.”
I wasn’t out there five minutes before three kids started running toward me from the south end. I looked back at the window of our apartment. The curtains were pulled almost together. Mom was there, in the almost space.
The three kids formed a V at the front of the bike. Bubba Graves was on one side, this guy called Rat on the other, and some boy I’d never seen before who smelled bad, in the front. We all just looked at each other, like we were waiting for some kind of signal. The one who smelled bad walked in closer, straddling the front tire. He grabbed the handlebars and jerked the front of the bike so hard I was thrown to the side, but I held on and kept my balance so I didn’t fall. The other two inched in closer to me.
“Better get the hell outta here.” It was what I’d rehearsed to say to anybody about anything, the next time I got picked on.
“Who you cursin’, faggot? You cursin’ me?” The Smell leaned in over the handlebars so that we were eye to eye. I held my breath.
Rat said, “Yeah, he cursed you. I heard him curse you.”
The Smell heaved the front of the bike toward Rat while Bubba Graves pushed it from the other side. Rat jumped out of the way as the bike fell over onto the snow with me halfway underneath it. I was still holding on to the handlebars. The three of them kicked the bike as I scrambled to get from under it. One, I couldn’t see who, straddled me from behind with his legs around my neck and started kicking into my ribs with his heels. My ears started to ring. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the ringing only got louder.